The great animal-sewer influx of May 2013

City crews use a large crane to haul up a City of Houston Public Works dump truck, after it fell into a sinkhole caused by a cave-in on Balmforth at Dumfries near Godwin Park on Feb. 8, 2011. Officials said the truck was carrying gravel to repair potholes on the street when the road fell out beneath the truck, which fell into the hole backwards. No injuries were reported and the truck was later lifted out by a large crane. Photo: Karen Warren / Houston Chronicle

Thanks to the city’s new online performance assessment website, we know there was a spike in reports of animals in storm sewers in May 2013.

Apparently it was a hard month to be an opossum or raccoon, because 41 storm sewer entrapments were reported, according the data supplied by the Houston Public Works Department. Of those, 40 were cleared within the month. We can only suppose that the one remaining managed to tread water until they got around to it.

The information is publicly available following a push by local web developers to offer more city information to the public. The city set up the site so residents can track results and assess how well the city is doing at correcting problems.

The numbers within some major areas show a good success rate, at least for the issues brought to their attention. Most potholes reported to the city are corrected within a month, according to the website. Except for a spike in December, which is common because of winter weather and rains, the number of reported potholes carried over from one month to the next hasn’t topped 55. In January, crews caught up a little bit by repairing 500 potholes as 481 new reports came in.

Let me stress this is the number of reported potholes fixed. Potholes that do not get called into the city will sit there until someone calls them in, or until someone with the city notices them.

Here are some other highlights, according to the data.

Alief, Greater Heights, Central Southwest and Montrose are the biggest complainers: In the past six months, those four neighborhoods have pretty consistently had the most reports or complaints.